FairBnB offers an online booking platform for accommodation. What sets them apart from their competition is that they stand for collective ownership, democratic governance, social sustainability and transparency. FairBnB wants to offer; “a community-centred alternative that prioritizes people over profit and facilitates authentic, sustainable and intimate travel experiences. We are creating an online platform that allows hosts and guests to connect for meaningful travel and cultural exchange, while minimizing the cost to communities”.

But how can you offer an authentic, sustainable and intimate experience? What role can the FairBnB’s hosts play to ensure that a neighbourhood like Amsterdam Noord sees the benefit of having tourists in the area?

The Urban Leisure and Tourism Lab will conduct a research that will lead to a set of guidelines that will stimulate hosts to offer an authentic, sustainable, intimate and local experience, that will have a positive impact on the neighbourhood of Amsterdam Noord.

To come to these guidelines local experts that know the neighbourhood and its inhabitants will be interviewed. Furthermore, in-depth interviews will be conducted with tourism experts. Workshops will be organised at the Student Conference Sustainable Tourism in Diemen and at the Responsible Travel minor in Haarlem, at which fourth year students can provide input. In addition, a dialog with local inhabitants and entrepreneurs will be organised regarding tourism in Amsterdam Noord and the role that FairBnB.

IJ-Amaze is aimed at creating a platform for meetings between visitors and the local people of Amsterdam-Noord. IJ-Amaze is an inclusive and sustainable tourist product in which co-creation, authenticity and meaningful contact plays a major role. The product is being created and fully cared for by residents of Amsterdam-Noord. Four themes (culture, active, social or creative) are the guiding principle for the residents to tell their ‘Noorderlingen’ stories about how it was, how it is, and how it will be in the future with Amsterdam-Noord and it’s inhabitants. Visitors who use IJ-amaze are matched with a program appropriate to their interest.

A student project group of the Inholland University of Applied Sciences developed an initial concept for the IJ-Amaze project in a design assignment. Given the potential of the project, the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab of the Inholland University, which focuses on the creation of inclusive and sustainable meeting places in Amsterdam-Noord, decided to do more research into the extent to which there is a need for ownership among residents of Noord, regarding the tourist developments in their neighborhood. This will be done by actual testing the prototype of IJ-amaze. The research and testing will be carried out as a bachelor thesis.
The project fits into the goal of spreading the tourist stream.